D&D General What You're Missing with Torches in B/X D&D

[EzekielRaiden]

The true upshot of this is how D&D moved away from exploration-based mechanics in favor of combat-based mechanics. Tracking inventory, paying attention to things like encounter distance, and, essentially, applying wargame tactics to the exploration of a dungeon were what the early game was much about.

On the one hand, many participants didn't enjoy this, and most tables quickly handwaved it. On the other, it got replaced with forever available resources and trap and encounter design that didn't need any of this. So, we end up forgetting about the logistics of exploration, doing away with the mechanics, and stripping down the engine so that combat is all that matters anymore.

Which, to me, means that the real lesson here is:

Why do so many people dislike the usual mechanics for exploration?

It's one thing to lament the loss; that's taste, and as I so often say, de gustibus non disputandum est. It's another to ask what meaning we can derive from it.

If you want a game where exploration takes center stage, ya gotta make it so doing exploration is interesting and rewarding, rather than tedious and mostly driven by whether you avoided a harmful thing happening. It took a little while for game designers to discover that exclusively or heavily "avoid the bad" gameplay is often not super compelling, while "try to achieve something good" tends to be so.

What would you do with mechanics like inventory/weight management, to try to make them actually rewarding, rather than just "congratulations, you don't have weight penalties" or the like?

 

[Mannahnin]

Which, to me, means that the real lesson here is:

Why do so many people dislike the usual mechanics for exploration?

It's one thing to lament the loss; that's taste, and as I so often say, de gustibus non disputandum est. It's another to ask what meaning we can derive from it.

If you want a game where exploration takes center stage, ya gotta make it so doing exploration is interesting and rewarding, rather than tedious and mostly driven by whether you avoided a harmful thing happening. It took a little while for game designers to discover that exclusively or heavily "avoid the bad" gameplay is often not super compelling, while "try to achieve something good" tends to be so.

What would you do with mechanics like inventory/weight management, to try to make them actually rewarding, rather than just "congratulations, you don't have weight penalties" or the like?

Right. And I think a lot of this falls down to unintentional and unexplained design. Gary & co made some terrible design decisions and quite a few great and amazingly-popular ones. While Gary immediately saw, for example, xp and leveling up as a "killer app", many other ideas they were throwing at the wall, and not necessarily clear themselves on what bits were really good and important or not.

For some elements, whether it be encumbrance management or mapping by verbal description, they really never explained the appeal or made clear the FUNCTION of these parts of the game and how they made for interesting decisions, fun, and tension.

When they were just selling to wargamers they could assume some common shared knowledge and cultural values. Including logistics being an important part of war and a way a skillful commander displays their superiority and gains advantage compared to a less-skilled one. When they were teaching new gamers themselves they could personally convey the importance of encumbrance, and SHOW the tension in the mapping/'don't get lost!" sub-game. But the books don't really teach those things.

So once the game got out to non-wargamer sci-fi fans (as early as '75), and once it exploded into the larger pop culture in '79, the way it sold and was described was more commonly "here's a way to act out and LIVE IN fantasy adventures like your favorite novels!" And novels don't tend to focus on logistics. Exciting ones also tend to have fast-paced plots which don't resemble adventurers (for example) going on a delve for treasure then going back home to rest for a week, then go back again. So we see immediate and ongoing changes to make D&D better at supporting fast-paced action like in novels. Healing becoming increasingly quick from edition to edition (with a minor regression from 4E to 5E) most prominent among them, but also alongside the loss of dungeon-crawling procedures, and encumbrance becoming increasingly vestigial as treasure became sidelined into an ancillary goal rather than a central motivation and challenge.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

and they're much less space/weight efficient

However, if you save a lot more weight by using lanterns instead of torches

This is not relevant in B/X. Neither encumbrance option involves tracking the weight of individual pieces of adventuring gear.

The only things tracked are carrying treasure vs not carrying treasure, and armor type (Basic Encumbrance) or Armor, Weapon, and treasure weights (Detailed encumbrance). In detailed encumbrance, all adventuring gear combined is treated as 80 coins of weight regardless of quantity and type.

Once a PC has completed their first expedition and has some extra coin, they should outfit themselves with a generous amount of both torches and oil flasks.

 

[Marc17]

The true upshot of this is how D&D moved away from exploration-based mechanics in favor of combat-based mechanics. Tracking inventory, paying attention to things like encounter distance, and, essentially, applying wargame tactics to the exploration of a dungeon were what the early game was much about.

On the one hand, many participants didn't enjoy this, and most tables quickly handwaved it. On the other, it got replaced with forever available resources and trap and encounter design that didn't need any of this. So, we end up forgetting about the logistics of exploration, doing away with the mechanics, and stripping down the engine so that combat is all that matters anymore.

Well, another thing the game moved away from seems to have been the game I think the creators and early players were really exploring which was the Braunstein inspired game of "What does your character do?" If you have a good plan, then you might not even have to roll dice. Not doing that puts much less emphasis on what useful items the party may be carrying. I remember one game where we needed to chop through something, but the closest we had some somebodies rapier which is not the most useful thing to stab a door to death with. My wizard was like "We've been camping in the woods for the past two weeks and nobody has a hachet? Here use mine.*" He later had to sacrifice that hatchet against a rust monster, finishing it off as a club, as nobody had non-metal weapons (except the rogue who had bought a fishbat in the last village as a lark).

*One of Roger's Rules for Ranging is to always carry a hatchet, it's a generally useful tool and in a pinch you can use it as a weapon.

 

[GreyLord]

I remember a dumb DM long ago that would hold sessions whenever he could. That meant, that if he and a buddy were at a restuarant and the rest of us were not, they would hold a session together and just pretend the rest of us were there so they could play them.

This resulted one time in me getting back and finding out that my character and another had been left in a dungeon by ourselves without any light (we had no infravision). Not our choice.

That was a particularly evil thing to do to some players without their input. Then they had us ambushed by a tribe of goblins with their Wargs.

Later I figured out that this was also, probably, racist...as the only two players to have their characters left in such a situation with no say in the matter just happened to be the two people who were minorities in the player group.

Retrospection can sometimes tell you things you didn't realize when you were younger.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Shadowdark has entered the chat.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Why do so many people dislike the usual mechanics for exploration?

I feel that the system doesn't do a good job of tracking supplies. It's not specifically tied to a concrete development, not much more than "You can't see" or "you're hungry."

To fix that, I like Darkest Dungeon. The light level slowly lowers. Make actions lower the light level over time, and have distinct mechanical effects for different light levels. Imagine a "lighting die": a D20 that starts at 20, and exploration actions drop it over time. Lighting an extra torch raises it again. Don't worry about specific distances and light cones, just the level of lighting for the party.

Similarly, tie rations to short/long rests; rests consume rations. If you run out of rations, rests might fail to replenish actions.

The point is that it should be easy and exciting to track, and filled with meaningful decisions. Maybe you go a bit farther without a torch. You don't have to think about how much time you have left, because you know how many actions you can take. Make it a game!

 

[CreamCloud0]

Which, to me, means that the real lesson here is:

Why do so many people dislike the usual mechanics for exploration?

It's one thing to lament the loss; that's taste, and as I so often say, de gustibus non disputandum est. It's another to ask what meaning we can derive from it.

If you want a game where exploration takes center stage, ya gotta make it so doing exploration is interesting and rewarding, rather than tedious and mostly driven by whether you avoided a harmful thing happening. It took a little while for game designers to discover that exclusively or heavily "avoid the bad" gameplay is often not super compelling, while "try to achieve something good" tends to be so.

i think the thing is you have to have exploration mechanics and world design that are interesting and engaging and not just 'you travel for three days to get to your destination, mark off provisions and now i'm going to roll to check for random encounters on the way' there needs to be things out there to find that are worth finding and doing, honestly i think gold for XP helped exploration as you were always scrounging around for more dungeons, temples and hidden treasure troves which would contain more gold.

What would you do with mechanics like inventory/weight management, to try to make them actually rewarding, rather than just "congratulations, you don't have weight penalties" or the like?

i'd simplify the encumbrance mechanics to a points based system, but the real thing i think that matters is revising equipment, tools and gear, the things you carry have to be important and have uses you care about for you to care that you're carrying them.

 

[TigerDude]

Torches were bigger back in the day because humans were the default race. In AD&D there were entire classes you could only play as a human, and there were lots of level limits on races in other classes.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

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